17 to 40: At Home in San Francisco

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At home in San Francisco for a good part of my adult life thus far…

I used to drive across this bridge 5 days a week as I chauffeured the girls I nannied to school in beautiful Marin County. I never tired of the view! How could you? It’s amazing in both directions!

I had left San Diego after about 4 years to head up the coast to the beautiful Bay Area. I was dating someone from San Diego, (not seriously…in fact it wasn’t the healthiest of relationships) who had moved up to San Jose for a job. I made my plans because I was ready for a change. Needless to say that I didn’t even connect with this person for 6 months or so after moving…but THAT’S for another story! 😉

So, I packed up my adventurous self and moved into a residential hotel in downtown San Francisco. (Note that this was NOT really the best place to be.) I pounded the pavement by day, making my rounds with all the nanny agencies and setting up interviews with parents.

My first position was a live-out job and I rented an apartment right near Chinatown! I was 5 minutes walk to here and 5 minutes walk to Union Square and downtown San Francisco. I loved it! It was a great place to be to explore the city for my first year in the Bay Area.

The family I worked for lived in Presidio Heights, just a few blocks from the Presidio itself. I would grab the bus early in the AM to head across town to work. I was a city girl with a cute little apartment above a tunnel.

After a time, the parents actually divorced and I was invited to live in a new home with mother and girls. It was still in the same part of town and I was attending San Francisco State University at the time so it seemed like a wise move. They had also become like family to me and I would have privacy downstairs in the new house.

I stayed with this family until after I graduated from San Francisco State in 1998. At this point, the girls were older and even though they no longer needed my nanny services I continued to live with them while I worked a nanny position in the beautiful and prestigious Sea Cliff area of San Francisco.

Here, I took care of one little boy age 4. It was a great job and I worked a lot of 24 hr shifts as the parents traveled a fair bit.

Once I finished college (Finally!), I had decided it was time for the big trip I had been planning. I registered for a school in Barcelona, Spain where I would spend 5 months getting my ESL certificate to teach English as a Second Language. (More on that in another post.)

I did complete the course, traveled around Europe (YAY!) and then after a stay with my parents in MI trying to decide where/what to do, I ended up back in San Francisco once again.

I found a live-in nanny job in Pacific Heights very near where I was living previously.

To the right is a picture of the steps I used to walk for exercise about 1 block away from where I was living.  The lovely view is of the Marina District and the Bay below. The Golden Gate Bridge is just to the left out of sight. How would you like to have this view while you exercised every day? It was amazing! 🙂

This was a crazy job to say the least. I will not go into details, but there were 3 kids, 1 lab and 2 crazy parents! I moved on from there pretty quickly to land an awesome job across the Golden Gate Bridge in beautiful Marin County where I would live and work for the next 5 yrs or so until moving away from San Francisco.

I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for this city and the relationships that were formed there. I learned a lot about myself at this time in my life. (More on this in future posts.)

I left my heart….   😉